{"id":641550,"date":"2026-03-24T23:03:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T23:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/641550\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T23:03:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T23:03:18","slug":"how-skip-schumakers-daily-intentionality-got-the-texas-rangers-on-the-same-page-for-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/641550\/","title":{"rendered":"How Skip Schumaker\u2019s daily intentionality got the Texas Rangers on the same page for 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON – The Rangers<\/a> played their final exhibition Tuesday. Veritable handfuls of people actually showed up, too. Must have heard there was a statue to see<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Make no mistake, though, spring training ended a night earlier. It ended the moment Skip Schumaker<\/a> went to the mound in the fifth inning with nobody on, two outs and nobody warming up, to casually inform 24-year-old Carter Baumler that, hey, he\u2019d made the team<\/a>. Maybe you think it was an odd time to drop that news. Maybe, then, you have no romance whatsoever about baseball.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Anyway, it was a mic drop on spring training. It was the final lingering roster decision, so the business of camp was completed and everything that followed was fluff. It was also the perfect way to end about as perfect a camp as the Rangers could have envisioned. Everybody emerged healthy. Largely, the offense seemed discerning<\/a>. The guys who needed to perform to win jobs performed. Everybody vibed. <\/p>\n

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And, so, Schumaker put the perfect coda on his first camp as manager. Let\u2019s call it Camp Intention. <\/p>\n

There was intent behind everything Schumaker did. From the first meeting of camp with pitchers and catchers, which was run by pitching coach Jordan Tiegs<\/a> instead of the manager, to informing Baumler on the mound on TV that he was going from Double-A to the majors, there was meaning behind every move. The first meeting was about setting an expectation that his coaches would have a voice and should be heard. Most importantly, he communicated the expectations clearly, plainly and with positive connotations. Tabbing Baumler mid-inning was just a clear way of telling a kid he\u2019d met the moment. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is intent every day,\u201d Schumaker said before Tuesday\u2019s 4-1 win over Kansas City. \u201cI think you come in every day with the goal of getting better or getting guys better or getting the trust of the team. I go back to \u2018trust,\u2019 as the word I\u2019d choose to describe this camp. Are they learning to trust me? Can I trust them? Can they trust their teammates? That is a big part of winning.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, there\u2019s intent behind everything that we do every day. There\u2019s intent throughout my day with everything I do in life. I just believe in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

His intent on Monday was not to go viral \u2014 goodness, a manager would rather have an actual virus than go viral \u2014 but to make a special moment for any player even more special for a kid who\u2019d done everything asked of him as a long shot to make the roster. Every player remembers when they were told they were going to the major leagues. For each of the 23,615 major leaguers who have come before, according to Baseball-Reference\u2019s total, it\u2019s a moment they never forget. Every story is special. So far as we know, nobody, however, has ever been told in the middle of a game while on the mound, surrounded by veterans. <\/p>\n

Back home in Des Moines, Iowa, it brought his mom and dad, who were watching on TV, to tears. When Baumler talked to his father, he could tell he had been crying. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my dad never cries,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Might have brought a few tears in the dugout, too. If not tears, then certainly smiles.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle things go a long way, right,\u201d said Corey Seager<\/a>, who was so initially confused by Schumaker\u2019s stroll to the mound, that he started back to shortstop. \u201cA little moment like that is big for him and for the whole team. A lot of guys with experience have never seen that before. It\u2019s memorable for the kid. It excites the whole team. We saw the embraces he got in the dugout. And you saw the uptick in his velo, too.\u201d <\/p>\n

The fastball did jump from 95 mph to 97 on the way to striking out Isaac Collins. Seager doesn\u2019t miss a thing. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he did last night was awesome,\u201d Jacob deGrom<\/a> said. \u201cIt\u2019s been fun to be a part of and see how Skip is handling this whole thing. You look forward to going out and competing for him, but everything with him is with intent. This is how we\u2019re going to do it. You set expectations. And as players, you want to live up to those. We have high expectations. He has high expectations and you can feel everybody pulling in the same direction. And everybody holds each other accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n

Said Nathan Eovaldi<\/a>: \u201cIt just seems like there\u2019s a plan behind everything. It seems like he has a crystal ball and he can see into the future and he\u2019s moving the right pieces now, getting everybody prepared for the moments to come. There is intent there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumaker said he spent the year between managing Miami and taking over the Rangers job focusing on ways he could improve. He hates nothing more than standing still. If you are standing still, he likes to say you are moving backwards. <\/p>\n

While he gained praise in Miami for his communication, he wanted to make sure he better honed his communication skills for his next job, if he got a chance. He focused on better understanding the front office perspective to marry it with the clubhouse perspective and create alignment in messaging. Which sounds like corporate babble, but can actually be understandable in plain language. But it\u2019s only effective when both sides trust one another. That goes for the good conversations and the bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, the [Baumler] conversation was great, but there were eight others that were horrible,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cA lot of those guys deserve to be on the team or had really good springs. And I had to give them bad news; I\u2019ve been on the other side of, and you just can\u2019t BS a big leaguer. So you have to let them know where they\u2019re at, because they\u2019ll see right through you if you try to sugarcoat something. I try to be as honest as I can, but maybe I tried to sugarcoat some of those conversations earlier in my career as a coach, and I realized that I didn\u2019t want that as a player, and I have to be better at that moving forward. And so I think that goes back to trust again, to being just authentic, no matter what.\u201d<\/p>\n

So after all those conversations, he got to have a moment on the mound that was for the kid and for the teammates. <\/p>\n

And what was the reaction? <\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the look in his eyes right away,\u201d veteran catcher Danny Jansen said of the mound meeting. \u201cEverybody daps him up a little bit. It\u2019s just a really cool moment to share with somebody. And, for me, it was just pure joy for the kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funny you mention that, Danny. We\u2019ve spent a lot of time asking Schumaker about winning culture and what being a good teammate is. And the answer he always supplied was in some way about experiencing joy at the success of others. <\/p>\n

It sure seems like Schumaker communicated his message to his team. And his team heard him loud and clear.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>Rangers\u2019 Jack Leiter shows off improved two-strike efficiency in final spring start<\/a><\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 young right-hander at times struggled to put batters away last season after he got them to two strikes.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>As Joc Pederson puts in work, Rangers look ahead to pay off despite uneven spring results<\/a><\/p>\n

Pederson has spent time in spring training doing additional hitting after games in an effort to bounce back from a disappointing first season in Texas.<\/p>\n

Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click or tap here to sign up for our Rangers newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON – The Rangers played their final exhibition Tuesday. Veritable handfuls of people actually showed up, too. Must…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2393],"tags":[4805,5,384,403,4,394,149,14902,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-641550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-corey-seager","11":"tag-jacob-degrom","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-nathan-eovaldi","14":"tag-rangers","15":"tag-skip-schumaker","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-texas-rangers","18":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116286654535642686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}